As read in the pages of Autotalk, the month of June was massive for new vehicle sales with 15,985 new vehicles sold according to the Motor Industry Association.As you would expect we saw this trend mirrored in the numbers of Leads, Test Drives and Sales captured to AutoPlay Sales Pipeline.The main reason for this is Fieldays – with over 14% more leads captured – generating almost 8% more Test Drives and Sales.

In June, the biggest influence on the number of leads captured was from our ‘Brand’ source.This is not unexpected as with each passing year brands/OEMs are taking more of an active hand in generating Fieldays activity for their dealership network.As the focus moved to Fieldays we saw ‘Web - Classified’ (Trade Me, Autotrader etc) drop to the second most prevalent source of leads but the actual volume remain static.‘Web – Dealer’ (the dealerships website) was still in the top 3 lead sources but there were 27.9% less leads captured from this source than in May 2017.

‘Direct’ (up 0.2% from May 2017) and ‘Brand’ (up 17.6%) remain popular sources of Test Drives occupying the first and second spot respectively.Interestingly although the number of leads from ‘Web – Classified’ remained static, June saw a significant 30.3% increase in Test Drives from this source – potentially reflecting the large number of ‘Web – Classified’ leads that were captured previously in May.

The top 3 sources of Sales are typically ‘Direct’, ‘Brand’ and ‘Web – Classified’.June saw a change in this with Brand occupying the second spot – up 17.6% from May 2017.As with the number of leads, this is heavily influenced by the additional sales recorded by dealers during Fieldays.Sales from ‘Direct’ sources were up 7% and like Test Drives there was a jump of over 30% in Sales from the ‘Web – Classified’ source as the high volume of leads captured in previous months filtered through to sales.

Make sure to check back in next month’s issue of Autotalk to see how kiwi dealerships fared in August 2017. Will there be a slump after a really busy May and June, or will we continue to see strong performance across the board? ​Matt Darby works for AutoPlay who specialise in pre-sale lead management tools. To find out more about AutoPlay services email sales@autoplay.co.nz or visit www.autoplay.co.nz